The Demon Crown

  It was a mistake.

  As the Kage collapsed, Masahiro’s grandfather shielded him, not by hiding his grandson in some hole, but by pushing him further into the limelight. Masahiro became vice president of R&D for Fenikkusu Laboratories, a company founded by his grandfather decades ago. He was even granted a board position.

  Still, his grandfather had assigned him another duty, one unknown to the board: to covertly gather the genin—or lower men—of the Kage, those who had scattered after the organization’s fall. He was to take them under his wing and build them into a smaller but deadlier force.

  Following his grandfather’s guidance, he patterned this new group upon the shinobi, the secretive warriors of feudal Japan, a group who would later be bastardized and mythologized under the name ninja. His grandfather, Takashi, believed in the older ways, when Japan was at its most glorious. Though over ninety years of age, Takashi was the new group’s jōnin, or leader. Masahiro was granted the title of chūnin, or “middle man.” All the genin reported directly to Masahiro.

  It was an efficient means of organization, one that had served the shinobi for centuries. Even their ancient training was honored, used to further hone the skills of the genin under him.

  To that end, Masahiro carried a traditional katana, the sword sheathed over his back. He also bore a kusarigama—a steel sickle attached to a length of weighted chain—coiled at his waist.

  While these were old weapons of the shinobi, Masahiro had updated their arsenal with modern tech. He and the others wore dark green camouflage with lightweight Kevlar body armor beneath and were armed with stubby 9mm Minebea machine pistols equipped with suppressors and night-vision scopes.

  Still, each member of the strike team also wore the traditional tenugui, a length of cloth used to hide one’s features, but which could also serve as a belt or even a rope for a quick climb.

  Masahiro adjusted his tenugui higher on the bridge of his nose.

  Where is this woman?

  Frustrated, he knew he could wait no longer.

  “Close in now,” he ordered. “Kill on sight.”

  9:47 P.M.

  Seichan crouched in the bower of a hundred-year-old mango tree. Its crown stretched thirty feet wide above her head, creating a pool of darker shadows below. She balanced barefooted on a limb as thick as her thigh.

  Moments ago, she had leaped headlong over the porch rail, careful not to brush the rickety wood. Anticipating the enemy might be equipped with night vision or infrared, she rolled under the porch and past the stilts that supported the cottage. She used the wooden bulk to hide her passage, then darted back out into the thickest patch of garden, running low, until she could clamber up the nearest tree, seeking higher ground.

  She expected focus to be on the cottage or the grounds.

  Hopefully, not up.

  She kept frozen on her perch. Her only movement was the silent breath in and out her nose. Then a rustle of dried leaves alerted her. A darker patch of shadows slipped under the wide bower below her. As she waited for her moment, she searched for anyone else in the immediate vicinity.

  No one.

  She took in this detail and judged the spread of the combatants. From there, she extrapolated the number necessary to surround the cottage and estimated a team of five to seven.

  Not great odds, but she’d handled worse in the past.

  Of course, back then she had been armed—with more than just a mango.

  It’ll have to do.

  She gently tossed the ripe fruit to the left.

  Below, the figure swung in that direction, one eye fixed to the gun’s scope. With the target’s back turned, she reached down to the rope knotted around the tree limb under her. It trailed down to the old swing where she and Gray had idled for many lazy hours. She hauled the line up, tilting the plank seat and drawing it higher.

  Before the figure could turn back around, she dropped quietly off her perch. As she fell, she tossed a loop of rope over the man’s head—then landed on the crooked seat with both feet. Her weight snapped the noose tight around her victim’s neck. Still balanced on the plank, she twisted and grabbed the man’s skull and finished what the rope had failed to do.

  Vertebrae broke, and the man’s limbs went limp.

  She stepped off the swing and relieved the man of his weapon.

  So much for shadow.

  She hefted the submachine gun to her shoulder.

  Now it’s time for fire.

  9:52 p.m.

  A volley of blasts drew Masahiro’s attention toward the cottage. The assault was under way. The suppressed gunfire sounded little louder than the clapping of hands. He shifted away from his position at the top of the cliff.

  His team must have finally rousted the woman out of hiding.

  Only a matter of time now . . .

  He listened for two more breaths as the night went quiet again. He heard the soft shush-shushing of the waves behind him. Then another spate of gunfire erupted, only from a new direction, closer to his position.

  Suspicion rankled through him. He crouched and touched the microphone buried in the folds of the tenugui covering his lips. “Status report?”

  As he waited, his heart pounded. He sensed something was wrong.

  Another short burst reinforced this.

  Then Jiro, his second-in-command, radioed. He sounded winded, his voice strained. “She’s secured a weapon. Took out three others.”

  More gunfire interrupted the conversation, followed by a sharp rattling cry.

  Make that four . . .

  Masahiro’s chest tightened with fury.

  Jiro spoke again, his voice hushed now: “Chūnin Ito, it is best you retreat to the boat.”

  Before he could refuse, a new voice cut in over the radio, sultry and calm, her Japanese flawless. “Or you can wait for me to join you.”

  Masahiro clenched the grip on his weapon. It seemed the woman had secured more than just a gun off one of his teammates.

  She taunted him. “Or are you too much of a koshinuke?”

  He bristled at the insult. He was no coward. Yet he also recognized she was goading him to act rashly. He took a deep breath, then spoke calmly.

  “I will secure the boat and wait for you there, Genin Jiro.”

  “Understood. I will find her.”

  A snort of derision answered this challenge. “Then let us play.”

  9:56 P.M.

  Seichan stood with her back to a palm tree as the exchange ended. She had her eyes closed, the stolen radio earpiece in her hand. She had heard the whisper of Jiro’s last words rising somewhere to her left.

  While her interruption had failed to spook the others or get them to overreact, she had managed to get a bearing on the gunman sharing the forest with her. She had already estimated that the group had arrived by boat, likely beaching somewhere north of the cottage’s location. The coastline to the south was too jagged with rocks and pounded by heavier surf.

  She weighed the odds of reaching the beachhead before the leader escaped by sea. Earlier, she had used the advantage of surprise and her knowledge of the local terrain to defeat four of the men, but the final target blocking her—the one called Jiro—would be wary and ready.

  So be it.

  She accepted the fact that she could not reach the leader in time and put all her attention into capturing Jiro alive. She planned on interrogating the man, picturing her knives rolled up in the cottage nightstand.

  I will get him to talk.

  She set off to the left, passing through a thicket without stirring a branch. She paused periodically to use her gun’s night-vision scope. Each peek illuminated the landscape in bright shades of gray. Her ears strained for every creak, rustle, and snap.

  She had memorized the grounds, as she always did with any new surroundings. It was as instinctual as breathing after so many years. She knew every bush, tree, and rock. So when she spotted a stationary boulder amid a grove of papaya trees forty yards to her left, she knew
it didn’t belong there.

  She settled to a knee behind a hibiscus bush, took aim, and fired two rounds dead center, avoiding a head shot if possible. She kept an eye on her scope. The bullets shredded through camouflage fabric and toppled the target over—revealing nothing beneath it but a frame of crossed branches.

  A decoy.

  Biting back a curse, she leaped headlong to the right. The hibiscus bush exploded under a spray of automatic fire. She landed on a shoulder and rolled to her feet. She kept firing blindly in the direction of the attacker as she ran. She didn’t expect to hit him, only to drive him into cover.

  She gritted her teeth as she fled. She would not underestimate her opponent a second time. She abandoned any pretense of capturing the clever man alive. When faced by such an adversary, there was only one safe play.

  Kill or be killed.

  Unfortunately, she failed to fully comprehend the game being played.

  As she flew around an outcropping of volcanic rock, she found a figure already waiting there, with a weapon leveled at her chest. It was a trap. She had been flushed here on purpose. She immediately knew the man was not Jiro.

  But rather his leader.

  The bastard had not fled back to his boat after all.

  She pictured the grin hidden behind his mask—as he fired at her.

  10:02 P.M.

  Masahiro savored the kill.

  Unfortunately, he was premature. The woman was still in motion when she flew into view. She used that momentum to pirouette sideways, slimming her profile, her arms high. His first volley of rounds ripped past her stomach, close enough to tear through her blouse.

  Before he could adjust his aim, she hammered her arm down. The butt of her stolen gun struck his wrist. Pain burst there, and he lost hold of his pistol.

  Fortunately, the impact also jarred the weapon from the woman’s grip.

  They stared at each other for a half-breath—then both moved at the same time.

  The woman lashed out with a roundhouse kick, while dropping low to retrieve her weapon. He leaped back to avoid the strike and grabbed the hilt of the katana sheathed across his shoulders.

  As she scooped the pistol, he yanked the short sword from its scabbard and swept it at her face. She leaned back at the last moment, the blade slicing past her nose.

  Though he had failed to draw blood, the damage was done.

  Following the ways of the shinobi, he had packed the top of his scabbard with a powerful irritant. In the past, warriors had used powdered red peppers to subdue their victims; he updated the formulation with ground ghost pepper and dry bleach.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  The woman gasped as a waft of powder struck her eyes. The reflex drew the irritant deep into her nose and lungs.

  She fired blindly, hacking and choking as she retreated.

  He sheltered behind the rock and waited until she emptied the weapon’s magazine. When the volley ended, he retrieved his pistol and gave chase. He intended to run his prey down himself.

  But she remained fast, even incapacitated.

  Within a few yards, a form burst alongside him out of the forest.

  Jiro.

  Masahiro pointed after the woman, and they set off together, both eager for the kill.

  Blind and breathless, she had no hope of escape.

  10:04 P.M.

  With tears streaming down her cheeks, Seichan ran. She held her arms out before her. Each gasp seared her lungs. Her eyes felt like two hot coals in her skull.

  It was as if she fled through the heart of a forest fire.

  Only these woods remained watery and dark.

  Her shoulder struck the bole of a tree and sent her careening to the side. She absorbed the impact, flowing with it to keep her footing. She dared not fall. She heard branches breaking behind her and the footfalls of her pursuers.

  Through the pain and tears, she focused on the blurry glow through the darkness ahead, a beacon in the night. The lighted window of the cottage. She needed to reach shelter and buy herself enough time to secure her knives and hopefully a balm for her eyes.

  No other choice.

  She forced one leg after the other, racing toward that light. She used the flow of the ocean breeze and the slope of the ground to further guide her. Branches and thorns tore at her. Sharp volcanic stones ripped at the soles of her bare feet. Still, she sought to run faster as the others closed in on her.

  She expected at any moment to feel rounds pound into her back.

  Finally, the air opened up around her. The bushes and low tree branches stopped dragging at her body. She must have cleared the forest and entered the cottage gardens. The glow of the kitchen window beckoned, as bright as the sun to her inflamed eyes.

  So close.

  Then her world exploded.

  Two supernovas burst to her right, circling the cottage on that side, coming straight at her.

  Blinded by the glare, she froze, a deer in headlights.

  Headlights . . .

  A voice boomed at her, impossibly loud.

  “Seichan! Drop flat!”

  She obeyed, trusting the man who held her heart. She stumbled a few steps into that radiance, then sprawled on her belly. The twin supernovas ran up and over her. The gust of a large vehicle’s passage whipped her torn blouse. She smelled exhaust as it cleared her.

  Gunfire erupted behind her.

  Then the heavy thud of metal hitting flesh.

  She remained where she was, too exhausted and in pain to move.

  Car doors slammed, and then a form dropped to his knees next to her.

  “Are you okay?” Gray asked.

  “I am now.” She rolled with a groan, barely able to make out Gray’s features. “Did . . . did you get both of ’em?”

  “Only one. He managed to shove the other guy out of the way at the last moment.”

  She pictured this act and knew what it meant.

  Jiro had sacrificed himself to save his leader.

  “Kowalski went after the bastard, but he vanished into the dark. Even if we don’t find him, I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  She stared off into the woods.

  At least, not yet.

  10:12 P.M.

  Masahiro raced the pontoon boat away from the shoreline. He rounded a volcanic peninsula to put rock between him and the cliffs near the cottage. He had already radioed the float plane to rendezvous with him and prepare for the voyage away from these islands.

  He sighed as he glanced back to shore.

  The bio-attack had gone as planned. The only exception was in Kauai, when a sudden storm had waylaid operations there. Otherwise, matters had been set in motion on the other islands, and nothing could stop what would happen from here.

  He faced the open ocean again.

  Despite the success, he burned with shame.

  He had failed in his grandfather’s vendetta. The two most involved in the downfall of the Kage still lived.

  And it is my fault.

  Still, he intended not to repeat this failure, but to learn from it.

  In the meantime, he would have to be satisfied to see these islands burn—especially as it would be the Americans themselves who would destroy Hawaii.

  They would have no choice.

  Once the truth revealed itself, the world would demand it.

  He smiled within the folds of his tenugui.

  Until then, the suffering here will be glorious to behold.

  SECOND

  EMERGENCE STAGE

  Σ

  10

  May 7, 3:05 P.M. EDT

  Washington, D.C.

  Twelve hours after the attack in Hawaii, Kat Bryant paced the length of Sigma’s communication nest. A tall Starbucks cup warmed her hands. She’d had no sleep overnight, except for a short nap. She was running on caffeine and adrenaline.

  Not unusual, not for this job.

  She finally stopped in the center of the circular room. The ambient light was kept low, li
ke the control room for a nuclear submarine. All around, technicians manned computer stations, their faces lit by the glow of their monitors. The nest served as Sigma’s digital eyes and ears. Information flowed into and out of this room, carrying feeds from various intelligence agencies, both domestic and foreign.

  She was the master of this domain, the spider of this digital web.

  Movement drew her attention to the door leading out to the hall.

  Painter strode in, looking harried. He must have just returned from his meeting with their boss, General Metcalf, over at DARPA.

  “What’s the latest?” he asked.

  “We have an updated casualty report.”

  Painter grimaced, clearly girding himself. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad.” She picked up an e-tablet from a workstation. “Across the islands, the number of fatalities stands at fifty-four, but there are over a thousand others hospitalized in various conditions. So, the death count will surely rise.”

  Painter shook his head. “And there’s no telling how many more will be injured or killed in the days ahead as the swarm establishes itself across those islands.”

  “It’ll be chaos for sure. Especially as local emergency services have no protocol for dealing with such an attack. Everyone is still scrambling for what to do.”

  “Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?”

  “Not so far. But I expect the usual suspects will soon latch on to this disaster and try to take credit.”

  Which would only further complicate the investigation.

  “What about the forensics on the crashed Cessnas?” he asked.

  “All pilotless drones. Each of the aircraft—at least those that weren’t burned beyond recognition—was reported stolen from sites around the globe, stretching back over the course of two years.”

  “So someone’s been prepping for this attack for a long time.”

  “It would appear so.”

  Kat set down her coffee, tapped at the workstation keyboard, and brought up a map of the Pacific Ocean on a monitor. A translucent red circle swallowed the chain of Hawaiian Islands, along with a wide swath of the surrounding ocean.